What do you do with all your Christmas cards after Christmas has come and gone?
We’ve tried a few different things. Before the days of photocards, I would save the pretty paper and use it to make gift tags for next Christmas — and I would save any enclosed photos in an album, but those days are (mostly) gone.
This is what we do now. About 3 years ago, as Christmas mail arrived, I started putting it in a little basket so I could attend to it when I had a calm moment. Turns out, I liked keeping them in the basket, so I kept doing it. The basket has turned into a sort of Guest Book of Our Lives.
The basket stays out year round. Sometimes it lives in the family room or office. Once it even lived on the mantel because it looked good in the display I had put together. And through the year, I add graduation announcements, wedding invitations and baby notices. Because they’re stacked flat against each other, the cards don’t take up much space at all, and our basket can hold several years worth easily. If envelopes indicate a new address, I keep the envelope at the back of the basket until we’ve updated our records. Occasionally, I’ll clear out any cards we no longer need to keep, but mostly it just keeps filling up, up, up.
I love sitting with the basket every month or so to look through the familiar faces. It always makes me emotional — so many people that I love!
What about you? Do you keep holiday cards? Or do they hit the recycle pile with the Christmas tree?
I had a baby and got tons of congratulations cards. All of the cars were trendy and cute so I decided to keep all of them. Also, the messages written inside are so encouraging! I made an album and put them in the back of my son’s baby book!
St. Jude’s Ranch recycles old cards by taking off the pictures and attaching them to new backs. They then sale the new cards for fundraising. Many libraries are collection sites.
I keep all the photo cards (and any other “special” cards) in a basket … then after the holidays I punch a hole in each, tie a ribbon or put a ring through them, attach a cute tag with the year and put them with all the decorations. Every year we get out all the past cards and see how much our friends have grown and remember old friends … my kids LOVE them!
As a Christmas card designer, I loved reading these comments!
I have a friend who wallpapers her garage with Christmas cards. She has at least a decades’s worth. It’s awesome!
Blessings!
Linsey
I burn the ones of people who had fantastic years, traveled, and want to brag about it. Very satisfying. I put the others in a cheapie album and let my kids look at it in church. Then they recognize the kids of my friends. Ta da!
I actually posted about this last month – http://jerseybaby.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/sealed-and-delivered/- because I keep ours up year round too. They stay in the card holder on a wall in the living room, and baby and wedding announcements, as well as school pictures, are added to throughout the year. It’s a piece of living artwork, you might say.
About 10 years ago, before my children were born, I went to a scrapbooking demonstration where the hostess had kept an album of all photo cards she had received over the years. What a treat to look back at my family and friends’ children over the years. From their first Christmas, to the family picture with them has teenagers. I started to do this the next Christmas and now I have a huge album with everyone’s children over the years. How much fun to look back at the kids as they grow and also show my kids pictures of family and friends as little kids that they only know as grown children or adults.
With the pretty cards, we take s pot that was unwritten on and my kids write memories from the past year or Christmas. WE pack it with their new ornamnet from that year. The following year as we are decorating our tree we read all our memories together. It is one of our favorite parts of the Holiday.
i make a collage scrapbook page for each year. i cut 1.5 inch squares out of my favorite pics/cards. the finished pages go into an album of just these layouts! i have a friend who is doing something great this year… she is going to have her cards in a basket and each night pull a card out an pray for that family!! love this!
What a great way to store Christmas cards!
During the month of December I hang them in our dining room from a bead garland. In January they get moved to our Christmas scrapbook. Photocards are placed on the scrapbook page. With “regular” cards I crop out my favorite part of the image, jot down the givers’ names, and tuck it into a pocket on the scrapbook page. I love watching how our friends’ children have grown from year to year.
Everyone has so many wonderful ideas!! I was very inspired!
I have a string that runs across my bedroom. I would place the cards over the string – birthdays, Christmas, etc. Once it gets too heavy I would then have to decide which cards to put away, but until then it’s the best way I can see them everyday!
I loved reading that you do this, because I do too! I never have a place to hang them and so they go in a basket in our living area. When I pack everything up after Christmas to store, I bring out this photo album….that has all of the years’ past photo cards in them, and insert the new ones (adding names if necessary because the memory will fail). It’s becoming a bit of a challenge with all the new shapes and sizes of photo cards nowdays, but looking back through this album at the end of the holiday season every year is a real treat. And now 11 years later, it’s just amazing how everyone has grown and changed. In a good way!
My mom always taped all of our holiday cards to the pantry or utility room doors, somewhere slightly out of the way, but not completely out of sight. Now I do the same thing in my own home. I leave the cards up until I get the first card of the next year. Then I take them all down and throw them away, and begin a new collection. Our utility room door and study door face each other across a narrow hallway that also includes our guest bathroom, so whenever friends come over they love stopping to look at the card collages. And because they stay up for an entire year, I can throw them out with a clean conscience!
I should have just included this in my comment above, but I’m a dunce and JUST remembered! Apparently my nana keeps her Christmas cards and puts them in photo albums. I can’t tell you how much fun my sisters and I had pouring over her albums from the 50’s and 60’s! Such adorable card designs, and so creative!
Here is my newest obsession for Christmas cards. This is the one I made. :) Here is the link to the how-to. You could easily do this with photo cards (or any photos) and then hole-punch one of the edges as suggested and it becomes an ornament! I’m planning to write the year on mine and do this every year.
What a fun idea! I have an out of print wall paper book that I just glue in all cards(Christmas thank-you’s, special birthday), invitations(weddings, baptisms) and announcements (birth and graduation)…
When it’s all full, I’ll just ask a wallpaper store for another old book.
I love the simplicity of this idea – no more cluttered refrigerator door!
I put together a Christmas card look book for the kids, more info. here:
http://www.modernparentsmessykids.com/2011/01/christmas-card-look-book-for-babies-and.html
Our family loves Christmas cards too…we put ours in a basket on our kitchen table and about 3x’s a week we pull a family out and pray for that specific family…it’s fun to look at their sweet faces, and then to ask Gods protection over the ones we love.
2 things:
i got a 3 inch diecut and a hole punch and gluesticks and string for my 3 year old & his friends (&moms/siblings) to make ornaments at our holiday playdate-they can also be gifttags
and
i cut some into 1 inch x 3 inch truangles and made beads fir him & his friends holiday bdays-wrap the tri aroubd a pencil, dab of modpodge and some leather twine and voila!
I keep them too. All year in a metal box on the table in my living room. I love looking through them all year.
Here’s a great idea from Paper Source: http://blog.paper-source.com/how-to/easy-holiday-card-display/
We put them all together till a family time where the kids are going to be “into it”….lay them all face down on the floor and play a game. Pick n Pray. they pick a card and then we talk about the family and the kid gets to say a prayer for that family. I love that they think about other and realize the needs of others. And I like shooting off emails to different friends with a note telling them what our kids prayed for, it usually is pretty amazing what they come up with!
great idea! thanks for sharing. you inspired me to start one of my own card baskets. i added this post to my blog as one of my favorite links for this week. have a great weekend.
Thank you so much for starting this discussion, Gabrielle! Do you think you could post a re-cap w/ the best ideas? I want to read all 83 comments, but I don’t have the time. ;)